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THE  ANCIENT  EAST 


No.  II. 

THE   TELL    EL   AMARNA 
PERIOD 


BY 

CARL   NIEBUHR 


The  Ancient   East 

Under  this  title  is  being  issued  a  series  of  short,  popular, 
but  thoroughly  scientific  studies,  by  the  leading  scholars  of 
Germany,  setting  forth  the  recent  discoveries  and  investiga- 
tions in  Babylonian,  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  History, 
Religion,  and  Archeology,  especially  as  they  bear  upon  the 
traditional  views  of  early  Eastern  History.  The  German 
originals  have  been  appearing  during  the  last  eighteen 
months.  The  English  translations  made  by  Miss  Jane 
Hutchison  have  been  submitted  in  each  case  to  the  A  uthors, 
and  embody  their  latest  views.  Short,  helpful  bibliographies 
are  added.  Each  study  consists  of  some  64  to  80  pages, 
crown  8vo,  and  costs  Is.  sewed,  or  Is.  6d.  cloth 

The  following  are  issued: 

THE  REALMS  OF  THE  EGYPTIAN  DEAD.    By  Pro- 
fessor ALFRED  WIEDEMANN. 

THE  TELL  EL  AMARNA  PERIOD.  By  Dr.  C.  NIEBUHR. 

THE  BABYLONIAN  AND  THE  HEBREW  GENESIS. 
By  Professor  H.  ZIMMERN. 

THE    BABYLONIAN  CONCEPTION  OF    HEAVEN 
AND  HELL.     By  Dr.  ALFRED  JEREMIAS. 

POPULAR    LITERATURE    IN    ANCIENT    EGYPT. 
By  Protessor  ALFRED  WIEDEMANN. 


THE 

TELL  EL  AMARNA 
PERIOD 


THE   RELATIONS  OF  EGYPT  AND   WESTERN 
ASIA  IN  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  B.C. 

ACCORDING  TO 
THE  TELL  EL  AMARNA  TABLETS 


BY    CARL  NIEBUHR 


TRANSLATED   BY   J.    HUTCHISO 


LONDON:   DAVID   NUTT 

57-59   LONG   ACRE 

1903 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  THE  TABLETS,  AND  How  THEY  WERE  FOUND 

1.  Position  of  Tell  el  Amarna         ...  9 

2.  The  Find     . 10 

3.  General  Contents n 

II.  THE  EGYPTIAN  COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION 

1.  The  XVIIIth  Dynasty        ....  14 

2.  Amenophis  IV.  and  his  Reforms        .        .  16 

3.  The  Royal  Residence  and  Court        .        .  17 

4.  The  Asiatic  Provinces        .        .        .        .  18 

5.  Pharaoh  and  Asiatic  Politics      .        .        .  ig 
III.  LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

1.  Modes  of  Address 23 

2.  Letters  from  Kadashman-Bel    ...  24 

3.  Letters  of  Tushratta  to  Amenophis  III.    .  27 

4.  Accession  of  Amenophis  IV.      .        .        .  31 

5.  Letters  from  Burnaburiash         ...  32 

6.  Letters    from   Assyria,  Alashia,  and    the 

King  of  the  Hittites          ....  33 

7.  Letters    from    Tushratta  to   Teye    and 

Amenophis  IV. 36 


CONTENTS 

PAGB 

IV.  LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

1.  Mode  of  Address 39 

2.  Aziru  the  Amorite  and  Rib-Addi  of  Gebal  40 

3.  Akizzi,  Labaya,  &c 44 

4.  Abdikheba  of  Jerusalem  and  the  Habiri    .  45 

5.  Milki-El  and  Tagi        .....  46 

6.  Robbery  of  Foreign  Ambassadors      .         .  48 

7.  Abi-milki  of  Tyre         .....  49 

8.  Other  Letters:  Adad-nirari,  Yabitiri,  Mut- 

Addi,  the  "synoptists"    ....  50 

9.  Itakama  of  Kadesh 53 

10.  The  Lands  of  Ubi,  Ugarit,  and  Danuna   .  54 

11.  Letters  from  Women          ....  56 
V.  POLITICAL    CONDITIONS    IN    THE    TELL   EL 

AMARNA  PERIOD 

1.  Causes  of  the  Situation  in  Syria  and  Canaan  56 

2.  Position  of  the  Kingdom  of  Mitani     .         .  58 

3.  Its  Fall 59 

4.  End  of  the  Reform  in  Egypt  59 


THE    TELL    EL    AMARNA 
PERIOD 

I.  THE  TABLETS,  AND  How  THEY  WERE  FOUND. 

As  early  as  1820  it  was  known  in  Europe  that  in 
Middle  Egypt,  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Nile,  in 
the  district  between  Minieh  and  Siut,  there  lay  the 
remains  of  a  great  city  of  Ancient  Egypt.  The 
Prussian  exploration  expedition  of  1842-45  gave 
special  attention  to  this  site,  where  indeed  were 
found,  about  sixty  miles  south  of  Minieh,  exten- 
sive ruins,  beginning  at  the  village  of  Haggi 
Kandil  and  covering  the  floor  of  a  rock-bound 
valley  named  after  the  fellahin  village,  El  Amarna. 
At  that  time  the  ground-plan  of  the  city  was  still 
easy  to  distinguish  ;  the  regular  lines  of  the  streets 
could  be  traced,  and  enough  could  be  seen  of  the 
great  design  of  the  principal  temple  to  excite  the 
admiration  of  the  discoverers.  This  example  of  the 
layingout  of  an  ancient  Egyptian  town  still  remains 
almost  unique,  for  of  old,  as  now,  private  buildings 
were  constructed  of  flimsy  material.  That  the 


io  FINDING  OF  THE  TABLETS 

Tell  el  Amarna  remains  have  escaped  rapid  de- 
struction is  due  entirely  to  the  sudden  and  violent 
downfall  of  the  original  splendour  of  the  city  and 
the  complete  desolation  which  succeeded.  The 
importance  of  the  place  was  revealed  on  examina- 
tion of  the  surrounding  cliffs.  Here  were  found, 
sculptured  and  inscribed  in  a  new  and  peculiar 
style,  the  rock-cut  tombs  of  the  most  distinguished 
inhabitants  of  Akhet-haten,  the  royal  city  built 
for  himself  about  1380  B.C.  by  Amenophis  IV., 
and  destroyed  soon  after  his  early  death. 

In  the  beginning  of  1888  some  fellahm  digging 
for  marl  not  far  from  the  ruins  came  upon  a 
number  of  crumbling  wooden  chests,  filled  with 
clay  tablets  closely  covered  on  both  sides  with 
writing.  The  dusky  fellows  must  have  been  not 
a  little  delighted  at  finding  themselves  owners  of 
hundreds  of  these  marketable  antiquities,  for  which 
a  European  purchaser  would  doubtless  give  plenty 
of  good  gold  coins.  To  multiply  their  gains  they 
broke  up  the  largest  tablets  into  three  or  four 
separate  pieces,  often  to  the  grievous  hindrance 
of  the  future  decipherer.  But  very  soon  the 
matter  was  fruited  abroad ;  the  Government  at 
once  intervened,  almost  all  the  find  was  in  due 
time  secured,  and  a  stop  was  put  to  any  further 
dispersal  of  separate  tablets  and  of  fragments. 
The  political  situation  in  Egypt  is  pretty  accu- 
rately indicated  by  the  fact  that  about  eighty  of 


GENERAL  CONTENTS  n 

the  best  preserved  of  the  Tell  el  Amarna  tablets 
at  once  found  their  way  to  the  British  Museum. 
Some  sixty  were  left  in  the  museum  at  Boulak, 
and  about  one  hundred  and  eighty  were  secured 
for  the  Berlin  Museum,  many  of  them  tiny  frag- 
ments, but  mostly  containing  important  records. 
Few  have  remained  in  private  hands. 

Some  alabaster  slabs  came  to  light  at  Tell  el 
Amarna  bearing  the  hieroglyphic  names  of  King 
Amenophis  IV.  and  his  father,  Amenophis  III. 
These  had  evidently  served  as  lids  to  the  chests. 
Some  tablets  also  were  inscribed  with  notes  in 
hieratic,  written  in  red  ink.  But  in  spite  of  these 
exceptions,  it  was  at  once  recognised  that  all  the 
documents  were  written  in  Babylonian  cuneiform. 
The  reading  of  the  introductory  lines  on  various 
tablets  served  to  show  that  the  find  consisted  of 
part  of  the  Egyptian  state  archives  in  the  times 
of  the  two  kings  Amenophis  III.  and  IV.  Thus 
the  first  of  the  many  startling  discoveries  that 
were  to  follow  in  such  rapid  succession  was  made 
in  the  recognition  that  about  1400  B.C.  the  Semitic 
speech  of  Babylon  served  as  the  language  of 
diplomacy  in  the  East. 

Apart  from  a  few  tablets  dealing  with  mytho- 
logical subjects  and  written  in  Babylonian,  and 
two  which  contain  inventories,  all  the  tablets  were 
letters.  Most  of  them  were  from  Egyptian  offi- 
cials in  Syria  and  Canaan,  and  usually  they  were 


12  THE  WRITING 

addressed  to  the  king.  Among  them  were  found 
many  long  letters  from  Asiatic  kings  to  the 
Egyptian  monarch,  and  also  a  few  communications 
from  the  Foreign  Office  of  "  Pharaoh "  himself. 
We  must  note,  however,  that  this  title  of  Egyp- 
tian kings,  so  commonly  used  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, is  apparently  never  once  employed  in  the 
Tell  el  Amarna  documents.  It  is  interesting  to 
observe  how  difficulties  of  the  script  and  of  a 
language  not  entirely  familiar  to  most  of  the 
scribes  were  overcome.  Even  the  learned  scribes 
of  the  royal  "  House  of  the  Sun  "  in  Egypt  had 
obviously  their  own  troubles  in  the  matter,  and 
made  use  of  the  Babylonian  mythological  texts 
already  mentioned  as  a  means  of  improving  their 
fluency.  Of  this  we  have  evidence  in  the  thin 
red  lines  by  which,  on  these  tablets  alone,  the 
words  have  been  separated  from  each  other.  The 
governors  and  officials  must  not  be  classified  as 
educated  or  uneducated  on  the  evidence  of  their 
letters ;  all  alike  employed  professional  scribes, 
of  whom  one  might  be  skilful  and  the  next  a 
bungler  whose  communications  must  be  guessed 
at  rather  than  read.  Occasionally  a  Babylonian 
word  is  followed  by  the  corresponding  Canaanite 
word,  also  in  cuneiform,  but  marked  as  a  transla- 
tion. Like  the  Egyptian  kings,  so  the  Asiatic 
sovereigns  had  each  his  staff  of  scribes.  One  of 
the  petty  chiefs,  Tarkhundarash  of  Arsapi,  was 


THE  CORRESPONDENTS  13 

evidently  so  unhappy  as  to  have  none  in  his  Court 
who  could  read  or  write  a  letter  in  Babylonian, 
for  letters  to  him  were  written  in  his  own  tongue. 
The  scribe  of  the  Hittite  king  produced  only  a 
species  of  dog  Latin,  while  the  scribe  of  the 
king  of  Alashia  trots  out  his  whole  vocabulary 
unhampered  by  grammar.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  letters  of  the  king  of  Mitani  are  drawn  up  in 
the  characters  known  as  Assyrian ;  and  it  is  pro- 
bable that  the  Assyrian  system  of  cuneiform  may 
have  originated  in  Mitani.  If  so,  for  the  Mitani 
scribe  there  could  be  no  question  of  any  special 
difficulty  in  using  the  acknowledged  language  of 
diplomacy  in  the  Ancient  East. 

It  is  evident  that  the  Babylonian  royal  scribes 
at  length  showed  some  consideration  for  their 
unfortunate  Egyptian  correspondents  by  writing 
as  a  rule  in  phonograms  which  could  be  easily 
spelt  out,  since  strange  ideograms  might  have 
brought  the  reader  to  a  standstill.  The  sources 
of  the  letters  may  be  distinguished  also  by  the 
colour  and  consistency  of  the  material  of  the 
tablets,  which  are  of  all  shades  of  clay,  from  pale 
yellow  to  red  or  dark  brown.  Side  by  side,  too, 
with  hard  and  legible  pieces,  lie  broken  and 
crumbling  fragments  which  have  suffered  sadly 
during  the  few  years  that  have  elapsed  since  they 
were  again  exposed  to  the  air. 


M        COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION 

II.  THE  EGYPTIAN  COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION. 

The  two  Pharaohs  of  the  Tell  el  Amarna  Period 
belong  to  the  XVIIIth  Dynasty,  which  about 
1 560  B.C.  had  freed  the  land  from  the  yoke  of  certain 
Asiatic  invaders  known  as  the  Shasu.  The  new 
dynasty  soon  began  to  encroach  upon  Asia.  King 
Thutmosis  III.  (1503  to  1449  B.C.)  after  many 
chequered  campaigns  conquered  Syria  as  far  as 
the  Gulf  of  Iskanderun.  On  the  African  side  he 
extended  the  bounds  of  his  kingdom  to  the  con- 
fluence of  the  Nile  and  the  Atbara,  so  that  the 
greater  part  of  Nubia  owned  his  sway.  The 
terror  of  his  name  did  not  die  with  him,  but  for 
long  did  good  service  to  his  successors,  the 
first  of  whom,  Amenophis  II.,  seems  moreover 
himself  to  have  maintained  energetically  the  fame 
of  Egyptian  arms.  To  this  influence  our  clay  tablets 
bear  witness  by  twice  making  emphatic  reference 
to  the  days  of  the  powerful  "  Manakhbiria  " — the 
prenomen  of  King  Thutmosis  III.  With  the  acces- 
sion of  Amenophis  III.  the  warlike  spirit  ceased  to 
prevail  at  the  Court  of  Thebes.  Nothing  more  was 
to  be  gained  by  Egypt  in  Western  Asia,  and  the 
tastes  of  the  new  king  lay  in  other  directions  than 
war.  The  two  celebrated  Colossi  of  Memnon 
(statues  of  himself),  many  great  buildings,  the  im- 
portant part  played  by  his  favourite  wife  Teye,  the 
well-filled  harem,  the  cultivation  of  M  wisdom " 


THE  RELIGIOUS  REFORM  15 

(which  practically,  no  doubt,  was  tantamount  to 
what  we  should  call  "  preciosity  ");  last,  but  not 
least,  the  solemn  adoration  of  his  own  divine  image 
— all  these  facts  combine  to  indicate  the  altered 
condition  of  things  which  came  about  under  Amen- 
ophis  III.  He  reigned  thirty-six  years,  long 
enough  to  allow  the  movement  introduced  by 
him  to  run  its  course.  His  son,  Amenophis  IV., 
was,  however,  just  as  little  inclined  as  his  father 
to  walk  in  the  steps  of  his  warlike  ancestors. 
Hampered  apparently  by  bodily  defects,  this  Son 
of  the  Sun  tried  his  strength  in  a  field  often 
far  more  dangerous  than  the  battlefield.  He 
began  a  reform  of  the  Egyptian  religion,  appa- 
rently in  the  direction  of  a  kind  of  monotheism 
in  which  the  chief  worship  was  reserved  for  the 
disk  of  the  sun,  the  symbol  under  which  the 
god  Ra  was  adored  at  Heliopolis  in  the  Delta. 

Nothing  being  known  of  the  life  of  this  king 
as  heir-apparent,  probably  we  shall  never  under- 
stand what  led  him  to  take  this  new  departure. 
From  his  conduct  during  the  early  years  of  his 
reign  it  may  be  concluded  that  he  intended  to 
proceed  gradually,  but  was  roused  to  more  aggres- 
sive measures  by  the  resistance  of  the  powerful 
priests  of  Amon  in  Thebes.  These  men  acted, 
of  course,  for  their  own  interests  in  promptly 
resisting  even  mild  attempts  at  reform.  Perhaps 
also  the  king's  aim  had  been  from  the  outset  to 


1 6        COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION 

weaken  the  influence  of  the  Theban  hierarchy 
by  new  doctrines  and  to  strengthen  the  royal 
power  by  steady  secularisation.  Open  strife  be- 
tween the  adherents  of  Amon  and  those  of  the 
Sun's  Disk,  the  "Aten,"  broke  out  in  the  second 
or  third  year  of  Amenophis  IV.,  that  is,  about 
1380  B.C.  The  immediate  removal  of  the  Court 
from  Thebes  to  Tell  el  Amarna  points  to  a 
failure  of  the  royal  efforts,  for  the  command  to 
build  the  new  city  had  not  long  been  issued,  and 
the  place  was  still  altogether  unfinished.  The 
official  world  promptly  broke  with  the  old  religion. 
The  king  altered  his  throne-name,  "  Amen-hetep," 
to  "Akhen-Aten,"  "The  glory  of  the  Sun's  Disk"; 
His  young  daughters  received  names  compounded 
with  "Aten,"  whilst  the  courtiers  found  it  advis- 
able to  strike  out  "Amen,"  if  this  chanced  to  form 
part  of  their  own  names,  and  to  substitute  for  it 
"Ra,"  as  having  more  or  less  the  same  significance 
as  "Aten."  "  The  doctrine,"  as  the  new  dogmas 
were  called  in  inscriptions  at  Tell  el  Amarna, 
was  regarded  as  so  entirely  a  matter  of  home 
politics  in  Egypt,  that  the  officials  of  Syria  and 
Palestine — all  foreigners — do  not  seem  to  have 
received  any  formal  information  regarding  it. 
Most  of  them  continue  to  refer  to  Amon  in 
perfect  innocence,  and  only  a  few  who  were 
better  informed  began  rather  later  to  take  the 
change  into  account.  Thus  Yitia  of  Ashkelon. 


THE  ATEN  DOGMA  17 

Pu-Adda  of  Wurza,  and  a  certain  Addudaian 
correct  the  name  of  the  Egyptian  commissioner 
"Amanappa"  into  "Rianappa."  Abimilki  of  Tyre 
apparently  even  tried  to  give  himself  out  as  one 
initiated  into  "  the  doctrine,"  and  to  represent  his 
city  as  a  servant  of  Aten.  If  this  were  the  case 
he  must  have  received  a  severe  rebuff,  for  after 
his  one  attempt  he  falls  back  into  the  old  style. 
Neither  the  royal  nor  the  national  pride  of  Egypt 
would  suffer  any  such  familiarities. 

The  new  capital  received  the  significant  name 
of  "Akhet-Aten"  ("  Horizon  of  the  Sun")  and 
was  solemnly  consecrated  long  before  it  was  half 
finished.  The  widow  of  Amenophis  III.,  the 
queen-mother  Teye,  came  occasionally  to  visit 
the  new  capital,  and  was  received  with  all  honour; 
evidently  she  had  paid  timely  respect  to  her  son's 
opinions.  How  far  the  Aten  dogma  represented 
real  progress  in  religious  thought  can  be  gathered 
only  from  the  contents  of  a  few  hymns  remaining 
on  the  walls  of  some  of  the  tombs.  In  these  the 
expression  of  devout  feeling  seems  to  have  become 
richer  and  more  spontaneous,  and  the  monotheistic 
tendency  is  evident.  This  characteristic,  how- 
ever, may  often  be  observed  by  a  sympathetic 
reader  in  the  hymns  to  Amon,  and  even  to  less 
important  deities :  the  deity  adopted  as  a  special 
object  of  worship  by  any  individual  is  always 
favourably  represented  by  him.  The  Aten  dogma, 

B 


1 8       COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION 

being  based  on  natural  phenomena  and  not  on 
mythology,  was,  of  course,  heretical. 

Those  of  his  officials  who  had  accepted  "the 
doctrine"  were  regarded  by  Akhenaten  as  de- 
serving men,  and  on  this  ground  alone,  Ai,  called 
Haya  in  the  Amarna  letters,  received  golden 
honours  to  the  full.  This  Haya,  who  was  en- 
titled "  beloved  royal  scribe/'  was  probably  a 
secretary  of  state,  and  was  once  sent  as  a  special 
ambassador  to  Babylonia.  Dudu  occupied  another 
important  post ;  Amanappa,  who  has  already  been 
mentioned,  seems  from  a  letter  written  by  him  to 
Rib-Addi  of  Gebal,  to  have  been  a  commander-in- 
chief.  Hani,  Salma,  Paura,  Pahamnata,  Hatib 
Maya,  Shuta,  Hamashni,  and  Zitana  all  appear 
as  the  bearers  of  royal  commissions  in  Syrian 
territory.  An  official  named  Shakhshi  receives 
instruction  as  to  the  conducting  of  a  royal 
caravan.  But  to  the  Asiatic  vassals  the  most 
important  office  of  all  was  the  governorship  of 
Lower  Egypt,  the  country  called  "Yarimuta,"  an 
office  filled  at  this  time  by  Yanhamu.  The  letters 
afford  abundant  evidence  that  any  vassal  who  had 
incurred  Yanhamu's  enmity  must  walk  warily. 
The  minister  of  the  king  of  Alashia,  though  his 
equal  in  rank,  sent  gifts  to  this  dangerous  man, 
who  had  harassed  merchants  of  Alashia  by  de- 
manding from  them  illegal  dues.  Rib-Addi  of 
Gebal  lost  land  and  throne,  in  spite  of  the  counten- 


THE  ASIATIC  PROVINCES  19 

ance  of  Amanappa,  because  such  was  Yanhamu's 
pleasure;  and  of  Milki-El  of  Gath  he  made  a 
severe  example,  to  which  we  shall  refer  later. 

On  the  whole,  the  Asiatic  provinces  enjoyed 
self-government  under  the  supremacy  of  Egypt, 
and  the  disadvantages  of  this  condition  of  things 
are  revealed  in  numerous  letters.  These  end 
almost  invariably  with  a  request  to  the  king  to 
come  in  person  to  the  aid  of  his  distressed 
vassals,  or  at  least  to  send  troops.  Sometimes 
this  was  done,  but  usually  such  expeditions  seem 
to  have  been  undertaken  with  inadequate  forces 
and  seldom  resulted  in  permanent  peace.  The 
native  princes,  chiefs,  and  village  headmen  were 
perpetually  struggling  with  each  other.  They 
made  alliances  among  themselves,  or  they  entered 
into  secret  treaties  with  neighbouring  states  and 
afterwards  brazenly  denied  them.  This  wretched 
state  of  affairs  may  be  traced  to  two  principal 
causes — the  tribute  question  and  the  immigration 
of  Bedawin  tribes. 

The  king  was  not  to  be  trifled  with  when  tri- 
bute was  overdue.  The  most  valid  excuses — loss 
of  territory,  war,  failure  of  the  harvest — were 
received  with  a  suspicion  doubtless  justified  in 
general  but  which  must  have  caused  much  hard- 
ship in  individual  cases.  The  ordinary  tribute 
was  fixed,  as  well  as  the  regular  subsidy  for 
royal  troops  and  the  force  which  had  to  be  raised 


20       COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION 

in  emergencies.  But  the  gifts — such  as  female 
slaves — which  must  needs  be  sent  not  only  to  the 
courtiers  but  even  to  the  king  himself,  added 
enormously  to  the  burden,  so  much  so  that  to 
the  poorer  chiefs  a  summons  from  Egypt  to 
appear  in  person  meant  little  less  than  ruin. 
Resistance  to  it  was  so  surely  to  be  counted  on 
that  such  a  summons  was  often  kept  in  the 
background  more  as  a  threat  than  anything  else. 
Now  and  then  petty  chiefs  in  Palestine  and  Syria 
withheld  their  bushels  of  corn,  their  three  oxen 
or  their  twenty  sheep;  or  perhaps  they  were 
so  sparing  of  bakshish  that  the  tribute  itself  was 
swallowed  up  and  vanished  entirely  from  the 
accounts.  It  was  scarcely  possible  to  take  costly 
measures  to  punish  such  delinquents,  so  the 
business  was  turned  over  to  some  kind  neigh- 
bour of  the  recalcitrant  chief,  and  a  little  war  was 
soon  fairly  ablaze.  But  when  direct  commands 
of  royal  ambassadors  were  treated  as  of  doubt- 
ful authenticity,  it  was  hardly  likely  that  the 
authority  placed  in  the  hands  of  an  equal  would 
meet  with  much  respect.  Both  leaders  received 
reinforcements ;  a  third  intervened  at  a  moment 
favourable  to  himself;  many  and  often  very 
remote  quarrels  broke  out,  and  when  at  length 
the  royal  commissioners  hurried  upon  the  scene 
it  was  hard  for  them  to  say  whether  or  not 
the  original  sentence  had  been  executed.  Cer- 


THE  SYRIAN  BEDAWlN  21 

tainly  most  of  the  property  of  the  original 
offenders  had  been  largely  lost  or  destroyed, 
but  the  plunder  had  crumbled  away  in  passing 
through  countless  hands,  and  the  royal  official 
might  seek  it  from  Dan  to  Beersheba,  or  farther, 
but  in  vain.  Out  of  the  first  difficulty  a  dozen 
others  had  arisen,  till  the  suzerain  seized  upon 
his  dues  by  force,  yet  without  leaving  peace 
behind  him.  The  tablets  are  full  of  references 
to  these  complicated  struggles,  which  it  is  not 
always  possible  to  follow  in  detail. 

Additional  confusion  was  caused  by  the  im- 
migration of  Bedawin  tribes.  In  the  north  the 
nomadic  Sutu,  in  the  south  the  Habiri  pressed 
forward  and  encroached  upon  Egyptian  territory. 
It  is  evident  that  this  further  pressure  was 
calculated  to  bring  matters  to  a  crisis,  for,  like 
the  tribute,  it  affected  pre-eminently  the  vassal 
chiefs  and  tribes.  We  find  the  Habiri  especially 
in  the  very  act  of  ruining  some  of  these  petty 
princes,  others  of  whom  preferred  to  make 
treaties  with  their  unwelcome  guests,  though  this 
indeed  was  apparently  in  secret  only.  But  the 
Sutu  reached  the  domains  of  more  powerful 
vassals,  and  by  two  of  these,  Aziru  and  Namjauza, 
were  openly  taken  into  pay.  Obviously  such 
alliances  with  land-seeking  plunderers  could  only 
prolong  and  embitter  the  strife.  In  Palestine,  no 
doubt,  peace  as  regards  Egypt  would  soon  have 


22        COURT  AND  ADMINISTRATION 

been  restored  had  not  the  Habiri  proceeded  to 
seize  certain  strongholds,  which  they  used  as 
centres  for  further  expeditions,  thus  involving  the 
settled  inhabitants  in  wider  quarrels.  What  with 
the  help  of  the  Bedawin,  and  the  universal  un- 
rest any  ambitious  vassal  of  Egypt  must  at  length 
have  seen  a  tempting  prospect  of  establishing  an 
independent  kingdom,  if  only  he  could  deceive 
the  Egyptian  Government  long  enough  as  to  his 
intentions,  and  delay  or  thwart  any  measures  that 
might  be  taken  against  him. 

Certainly  the  government  of  Pharaoh  did  not 
lack  for  watchfulness  and  was  well,  if  not  too  well, 
served  in  the  matter  of  information.  But  in  the 
Jace  of  perpetual  complaints  and  counter-com- 
plaints, entreaties  for  help  and  what  were  for 
the  most  part  incredible  assurances  of  everlasting 
fidelity,  there  was  no  course  for  the  king  and  his 
councillors  to  take  but  either  to  order  a  military 
expedition  on  a  large  scale,  or  to  turn  a  sceptical 
ear  to  all  alike  and  confine  their  attention  simply 
to  the  tribute.  Pride  and  weakness  combined  led 
them  to  take  the  dangerous  middle  course  and 
send  inadequate  bodies  of  men  singly  into  the 
disturbed  districts.  A  certain  amount  of  success 
attended  the  policy;  the  king's  Nubian  "Pidati" 
were  dreaded  from  of  old,  and  his  mercenaries,  the 
Shirtani,  were  looked  upon  as  invincible.  When 
it  was  a  mere  question  of  hundreds  in  the  field 


LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS       23 

against  hundreds,  the  appearance  of  a  company, 
or  of  a  few  troops,  restored  peace  for  a  time,  but 
serious  and  aggravated  hostilities  between  masses 
of  rebels  could  not  always  be  checked  by  such 
small  numbers,  and  it  was  a  severe  blow  to  the 
prestige  of  the  Shirtani  when  they  were  defeated 
at  Gebal  by  the  Sutu. 

The  knowledge  that  Egypt  was  far  away,  and 
that  the  Son  of  the  Sun  was  highly  exalted,  led 
the  chiefs  and  officials  in  Syria  and  Canaan  to 
deeds  of  open  defiance  of  their  suzerain.  Am- 
bassadors from  foreign  states  were  robbed  in 
passing  on  their  journey  to  Egypt,  caravans  were 
plundered,  and  gifts  sent  to  Pharaoh  were  inter- 
cepted. All  this  notwithstanding,  still  the  stream 
of  rhetorical  devotion  flowed  on  in  the  letters. 


III.  LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS. 

Akhenaten  had  taken  with  him  to  the  new 
capital  part  of  the  archives  of  his  father.  With 
few  exceptions,  it  is  not  from  the  letters  of  vassals 
that  we  learn  this,  for  these,  as  a  rule,  are 
addressed  simply  "  To  the  King."  The  foreign 
sovereigns,  however,  almost  always  addressed  the 
Pharaoh  by  his  prenomen.  Thus  neither  "  Amen- 
hetep"  nor  "Akhenaten"  appears  in  the  Tell  el 
Amarna  letters,  but  always  "Nimmuria"  (i.e.t  Neb- 


24       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

maat-Ra)  for  Amenophis  III.  and  "Napkhuria" 
(i.e.,  Nefer-khepru-Ra)  for  Akhenaten.  Dating 
there  was  none  in  correspondence  of  that  time 
and  hence  these  addresses  are  of  great  chrono- 
logical importance. 

Four  communications  to  "  Nimmuria"  from  the 
Babylonian  ruler  Kadashman-Bel  (at  first  in- 
correctly read  Kallima-Sin)  are  among  the  most 
important  in  this  respect.  The  writer  calls  his 
land  Karduniash,  a  name  for  Babylonia  used  by 
the  Assyrians  after  the  native  employment  of  it 
had  long  ceased.  Kadashman-Bel  himself  be- 
longed to  the  house  of  the  Kassite  chiefs,  who, 
about  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  previously,  had 
invaded  and  conquered  Babylonia,  but  who  after- 
wards fully  adopted  Babylonian  manners  and 
customs.  It  is  at  once  apparent  that  Nimmuria 
and  Kadashman-Bel  approach  each  other  as  equals. 
The  Egyptian,  however,  was  supposed  to  possess 
one  very  precious  thing  in  superfluity,  namely, 
gold ;  for  at  that  time  the  gold  mines  of  Nubia 
were  in  good  working.  The  Babylonian  letters, 
therefore,  seldom  failed  to  contain  a  hint  that  the 
king  desired  some  of  the  precious  metal,  some- 
times as  a  return  gift  for  rich  presents  he  had 
given  the  Egyptian,  sometimes  as  temple-offerings, 
or  as  a  dowry.  Matrimonial  alliances  were  the 
principal  means  by  which  a  ruler  kept  on  good 
terms  with  neighbouring  princes,  and  Oriental 


ROYAL  MARRIAGES  25 

polygamy  allowed  a  great  deal  to  be  done  in  that 
line.  It  is  noticeable  that  the  claim  made  by  the 
Egyptian  king  to  divine  honours  soon  began  to 
cause  little  difficulties  in  diplomatic  intercourse. 
Not  that  "  the  Son  of  the  Sun  "  claimed  adoration 
from  his  royal  compeers :  that  was  expected  from 
his  subjects  only.  But  he  showed  the  greatest 
reluctance  to  give  away  a  daughter  to  any  foreign 
king.  Moreover,  the  fact  must  not  be  overlooked 
that  it  was  precisely  in  the  XVIIIth  Dynasty  that 
brothers  and  sisters  of  the  royal  house  so  fre- 
quently intermarried,  a  custom  afterwards  affected 
by  the  Ptolemies  and  implying  simply  that  the 
royal  race  of  the  Pharaohs  being  emphatically 
divine  was  therefore  essentially  exalted  above 
the  world  in  general.  According  to  this  flattering 
fiction  there  could  be  no  equal  union  for  a  king  of 
Egypt  except  with  his  own  sister.  No  such 
marriage  seems  to  have  been  made  by  Nimmuria, 
but,  as  if  in  amends  for  that,  he  worshipped,  as 
above  stated,  his  own  divine  image.  We  need 
not  wonder,  then,  that  he  regarded  his  children 
as  divine  manifestations  and  hesitated  to  bestow 
them  in  marriage. 

Kadashman-Bel  seems  to  have  thoroughly 
appreciated  this  little  weakness,  and  no  doubt 
the  mortal  gods  on  the  Nile  were  a  subject  for 
mockery  at  the  Courts  of  Western  Asia,  even  in 
those  days.  Thus,  a  remark  of  Nimmuria's  to 


26       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

the  effect  that  no  princess  had  ever  been  given 
away  from  Egypt  is  answered  with  delightful 
dryness : 

"  Why  so  ?  A  king  art  thou,  and  canst  do  accord- 
ing to  thy  will.  If  thou  give  her,  who  shall  say 
anything  against  it  ?  I  wrote  before,  '  Send,  at  least, 
a  beautiful  woman.'  Who  is  there  to  say  that  she  is 
not  a  king's  daughter  ?  If  thou  wilt  not  do  this, 
thou  hast  no  regard  for  our  brotherhood  and  friend- 
ship." 

Kadashman-Bel  threatened  that  he  in  his  turn 
would  hesitate  to  give  his  daughter  in  marriage, 
and  would  make  similar  evasive  excuses.  At 
last,  however,  the  negotiations  came  to  the  desired 
conclusion,  and  for  a  time  gifts  flowed  more  freely 
on  both  sides. 

Valuable,  though  in  many  respects  puzzling,  is 
a  large  tablet  containing  a  letter  of  Nimmuria  to 
Kadashman-Bel.  Possibly  it  may  have  been  kept 
as  a  copy,  and  in  that  case  it  must  belong  to  the 
early  part  of  the  correspondence.  More  probably 
however,  the  letter  is  an  original  which  came  back 
"undelivered"  to  Egypt,  the  addressee  having 
died  in  the  meantime.  Kadashman-Bel  had  com- 
plained that  his  sister,  who  had  been  given  by  his 
father  in  marriage  to  the  Egyptian,  had  subse- 
quently never  once  been  seen  by  any  Babylonian 
ambassadors.  Certainly  a  woman  in  royal  garb 
had  been  pointed  out,  but  not  one  of  them  had 


TUSHRATTA  OF  MITANI  27 

recognised  her  as  their  own  princess.  "Who 
knows  that  it  was  not  some  beggar's  daughter, 
a  Gagaian,  or  a  maiden  of  Hanirabbat  or 
Ugarit  whom  my  messengers  saw  ? "  Then 
Nimmuria  took  up  the  tale,  and  complained  that 
Kadashman-Bel  sent  only  ambassadors  who  had 
never  frequented  his  father's  Court,  and  were  more- 
over of  adverse  bias.  "  Send  a  kamiru  "  (evidently 
a  eunuch  is  meant)  "who  knows  thy  sister." 
Further  misunderstandings  come  under  discussion, 
from  which  it  is  evident  that  the  general  situation 
between  the  two  princes  was  very  much  strained. 
King  Tushratta  of  Mitani  was  a  phenomenon 
in  his  way.  In  Egyptian  inscriptions  his  kingdom 
is  called  Naharina — i.e.,  "  Mesopotamia."  One  of 
his  tablets  bears  the  following  official  memoran- 
dum, written  in  red  ink  and  in  hieratic : 

"  [Received]  in  the  two-[and-thirtieth  year  of  the 
reign  of  Nimmuria],  in  the  first  winter  month,  on  the 
tenth  day,  the  Court  being  at  the  southern  residence 
(Thebes),  in  the  Residence  Ka-em-Ekhut.  Duplicate 
of  the  Naharina  letter  brought  by  the  messenger 
Pirizzi  and  (another)." 

Tushratta's  dominion  was  wide,  extending  from 
south-eastern  Cappadocia  to  beyond  the  later 
Assyrian  capital,  Nineveh.  But  the  kingdom  of 
Mitani,  occasionally  called  after  the  northern 
fatherland  of  its  people,  Hanirabbat,  was  nearing 
its  fall.  In  the  south  it  had  a  dangerous  enemy 


28       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

in  Babylonia ;  in  the  north  and  west  the  Hittites 
were  hostile  and  all  the  more  to  be  dreaded 
since  Mitani-Hanirabbat  was  inhabited  by  a 
people  related  to  the  Hittite  stock.  The  kings 
of  Mitani  soon  realised  that  their  existence  was 
best  secured  by  a  steady  alliance  with  Egypt. 
To  this  end  Artatama  and  Shutarna,  the  two  pre- 
decessors of  Tushratta,  had  sent  their  daughters 
to  the  harem  of  the  Pharaohs.  The  so-called 
"marriage  scarab"  of  Nimmuria  bears  witness 
to  this,  and  reference  to  the  bond  is  often  made 
by  Tushratta.  Before  he  could  ascend  the  throne 
he  had  various  difficulties  to  contend  against,  of 
which  a  faithful  account  is  sent  to  Egypt : 

"  When  I  ascended  my  father's  throne  I  was  still 
young,  for  Pirhi  did  evil  to  my  land  and  had  slain  its 
lord.  Therefore  he  did  evil  to  me  also  and  to  all  my 
friends.  But  I  quailed  not  before  the  crimes  that  were 
committed  in  my  land,  but  slew  the  murderers  of 
Artashumara  my  brother,  with  all  their  adherents. 
Know  also,  oh,  my  royal  brother !  that  the  whole 
army  of  the  Hittites  marched  against  my  land.  But 
the  God  Teshup,  the  lord,  delivered  them  into  my 
hand  and  I  destroyed  them.  Not  one  man  from 
their  midst  returned  to  his  own  land.  And  now  I 
have  sent  to  thee  a  chariot  and  two  horses,  a  youth 
and  a  maiden,  the  booty  of  the  land  of  the  Hittites." 

This  letter  betrays  itself  as  one  of  the  earliest 
written  for  Tushratta  by  the  fact  that  it  makes  no 
request  for  gold.  All  his  later  letters  are  filled 


TUSHRATTA  OF  MITANI  29 

with  greedy  entreaties,  completely  giving  the  lie 
to  the  immediate  pretext  under  which  they  were 
professedly  written.  One  of  them,  more  than  a 
yard  long  and  proportionately  broad,  still  keeps 
its  charms  to  itself,  since  for  some  unknown 
reason,  though  written  in  cuneiform  character 
like  the  rest,  the  language  is  that  of  Hanirabbat 
and  this  we  are  still  unable  to  read.  Nimmuria 
indeed,  seems  to  have  had  a  weakness  for  this 
worthy  brother-in-law  and  his  ingenuous  manner 
of  approaching  him,  and  spared  neither  presents 
nor  promises  ;  at  his  death,  however,  some  of  the 
latter  remained  unfulfilled.  Evidently  neighbour- 
ing kings  heard  at  length  of  Tushratta's  financial 
success  and  were  naturally  envious.  An  extract 
will  give  the  reader  a  more  definite  notion  of  this 
royal  correspondence  with  its  stylisms  and  turns  of 
thought.  The  following  is  taken  from  Letter  VIII. 
in  the  British  Museum  edition.  The  long-winded 
introduction  was  already  a  fixed  convention,  and 
occurs  in  all  the  letters  from  whatever  country, 
but  the  declaration  of  affection  is  peculiar  to 
Tushratta : 

"  To  Nimmuria,  the  great  king,  the  king  of  Egypt, 
my  brother,  my  brother-in-law  j  who  loves  me  and 
whom  I  love  :  Tushratta,  the  great  king,  thy  (future) 
father-in-law,  king  of  Mitani ;  who  loves  thee  and  is 
thy  brother.  It  is  well  with  me ;  may  it  be  well 
with  thee,  with  thy  house,  with  my  sister  and  thy 


30       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

other  wives,  with  thy  sons,  thy  chariots,  thy  horses, 
thy  nobles,  thy  land,  and  all  that  is  thine,  may  it  be 
well  with  them  indeed  !  Whereas  thy  fathers  in  their 
time  kept  fast  friendship  with  my  fathers,  thou  hast 
increased  the  friendship.  Now,  therefore,  that  thou 
and  I  are  friends  thou  hast  made  it  ten  times  closer 
than  with  my  father.  May  the  gods  cause  our  friend- 
ship to  prosper  !  May  Teshup,  the  lord,  and  Amon 
ordain  it  eternally  as  it  now  is  !  I  write  this  to  my 
brother  that  he  may  show  me  even  more  love  than  he 
showed  my  father.  Now  I  ask  gold  from  my  brother, 
and  it  behoves  me  to  ask  this  gold  for  two  causes  : 
in  the  first  place  for  war  equipment  (to  be  provided 
later),  and  secondly,  for  the  dowry  (likewise  to  be 
provided).  So,  then,  let  my  brother  send  me  much 
gold,  without  measure,  more  than  to  my  father.  For 
in  my  brother's  land  gold  is  as  the  dust  of  the  earth. 
May  the  gods  grant  that  in  the  land  of  my  brother, 
where  already  so  much  gold  is,  there  may  be  ten 
times  more  in  times  to  come !  Certainly  the  gold 
that  I  require  will  not  trouble  my  brother's  heart,  but 
let  him  also  not  grieve  my  heart.  Therefore  let  my 
brother  send  gold  without  measure,  in  great  quantity. 
And  I  also  will  grant  all  the  gifts  that  my  brother 
asks.  For  this  land  is  my  brother's  land,  and  this 
my  house  is  his  house." 

All  Tushratta's  letters  are  written  in  this  tone 
with  the  exception  of  the  last.  Nimmuria  felt  his 
end  approaching,  and  entreated  the  aid  of  "  Our 
Lady  of  Nineveh."  Such  an  expedient  was  not 
foreign  to  Egyptian  thought.  A  late  inscription 
professes  to  tell  how  a  certain  divine  image  was 
sent  from  Thebes  to  a  distant  land  for  the  healing 


AKHENATEN  31 

of  a  foreign  princess.  From  Tushratta's  answer 
also  it  appears  that  the  statue  of  the  goddess 
Ishtar  had  once  before  been  taken  from  Nineveh 
to  Thebes. 

This  letter  begins  solemnly  : 

"  The  words  of  Ishtar  of  Nineveh,  mistress  of  all 
lands.  '  To  Egypt,  to  the  land  that  I  love  will  I  go, 
and  there  will  I  sojourn.'  Now  I  send  her  and  she 
goes.  Let  my  brother  worship  her  and  then  let  her 
go  in  gladness  that  she  may  return.  May  Ishtar 
protect  my  brother  and  me  for  a  hundred  thousand 
years.  May  she  grant  unto  us  both  great  gladness; 
may  we  know  nothing  but  happiness." 

All  this  notwithstanding,  Nimmuria  must  die,  and 
later  Tushratta  describes  his  own  grief  on  the 
occasion  : 

"  And  on  that  day  I  wept,  I  sat  in  sorrow.  Food 
and  drink  I  touched  not  on  that  day ;  grieved  was  my 
heart.  I  said,  «  Oh,  that  it  had  been  I  who  died  ! ' " 

When  he  wrote  thus  the  feelings  expressed  were 
probably  genuine,  for  times  had  changed  sadly  for 
him  and  men  of  his  type. 

We  have  now  come  to  the  accession  of  the 
reforming  king  Napkhuria  —  i.e.,  Akhenaten. 
This  zealot  succeeded  in  bringing  into  the  foreign 
relations  of  Egypt  some  of  the  unrest  caused,  by 
his  measures  in  home  politics.  To  begin  with, 
he  sought  for  new  political  alliances  and  sacri- 
ficed those  already  existing,  not  by  breaking  off 
the  connections,  but  by  turning  a  deaf  ear  to 


32       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

requests,  or  by  adopting  an  insolent  tone  in  his 
answers.  On  one  occasion  he  showered  on  the 
old  beggar  Tushratta  derision  which  was  no 
doubt  well  deserved,  but  which  it  was  most  im- 
politic to  express  so  plainly.  He  gives  one  the 
impression  of  an  inexperienced  prince,  brought 
up  in  Oriental  seclusion,  who  persists  at  all 
hazards  in  playing  the  part  of  a  shrewd  and 
worldly-wise  ruler.  He  strained  after  novelty  at 
the  expense  of  his  own  security,  and  attempted 
to  demonstrate  the  strength  of  the  supports  of  his 
throne  by  sawing  them  through. 

About  the  time  of  Nimmuria's  death  Kadashman- 
Bel  of  Babylonia  also  died,  and  Burnaburiash, 
probably  his  brother  or  cousin,  was  prepared  on 
his  accession  to  maintain  the  traditional  friend- 
ship with  Egypt.  But  at  the  very  beginning 
Napkhuria  was  guilty  of  a  breach  of  etiquette  in 
neglecting  to  send  any  expression  of  sympathy 
during  a  long  illness  of  Burnaburiash.  In  spite 
of  many  fine  words,  the  usual  matrimonial  nego- 
tiations did  not  run  smoothly ;  moreover,  attacks 
were  made  on  travelling  messengers,  and  at  length 
Napkhuria's  avarice  forced  the  Babylonian  to 
measures  of  retaliation,  and  he  writes : 

"  Since  ambassadors  from  thy  fathers  came  to  my 
fathers,  they  also  have  lived  on  friendly  terms.  We 
should  continue  in  the  same.  Messengers  have  now 
come  from  thee  thrice,  but  thou  hast  sent  with  them 


BURNABURIASH  33 

no  gift  worthy  the  name.  I  also  shall  desist  in  the 
same  way.  If  nothing  is  denied  me  I  shall  deny  thee 
nothing." 

Meanwhile,  the  dear  brother  in  Egypt  was  con- 
tinually finding  opportunities  to  annoy  the  Baby- 
lonian. Assyria  was  then  a  small  state  on  the 
middle  Tigris,  in  exactly  the  same  relation  to  the 
suzerainty  of  Babylonia  as  Canaan  was  to  that  of 
Egypt.  Disregarding  this  fact,  Napkhuria  sent  a 
very  large  quantity  of  gold  to  the  prince  Assurna- 
dinakhi  and  ostentatiously  received  an  Assyrian 
embassy.  Burnaburiash,  in  remonstrating,  re- 
ferred to  the  loyal  conduct  of  his  father,  Kurigalzu, 
who  had  answered  the  Canaanites  with  threats 
when,  in  an  attempted  rising  against  Nimmuria, 
they  offered  to  do  homage  to  Kurigalzu. 

"  Now  there  are  the  Assyrians,  my  vassals.  Have 
not  I  already  written  to  thee  in  regard  to  them  ?  If 
thou  lovest  me  they  will  gain  nothing  from  thee.  Let 
them  depart  unsuccessful." 

This  exhortation  seems  to  have  been  vain,  for  a 
letter  of  the  next  Assyrian  king,  Assuruballit, 
speaks  of  a  regular  exchange  of  messengers,  and 
indicates  that  the  Sutu  of  the  desert — doubtless 
at  the  instigation  of  the  Babylonians — were  about 
to  kill  every  Egyptian  who  showed  himself  in 
their  territory. 

A  prince  of  Alashia,  who  never  mentions  either 

C 


34       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

his  own  name  or  that  of  the  Egyptian  king,  wrote 
short  letters,  for  the  most  part  of  a  business 
character.  Alashia  probably  lay  on  the  Cilician 
coast.  Gold  did  not  tempt  him ;  he  asked  mo- 
destly for  silver  in  return  for  copper,  for  oil, 
textiles  and  manufactured  articles  in  return  for 
wood  for  building.  Thus  the  tablets  from  Alashia 
are  rich  in  information  regarding  commercial 
matters  and  questions  of  public  rights.  They  are 
of  special  interest  for  us,  owing  to  the  fact  that 
one  of  them  contains  the  first  historic  mention  of 
the  plague. 

"  Behold  !  my  brother,  I  have  sent  thee  five  hun- 
dred talents  of  copper  as  a  gift.  Let  it  not  grieve 
my  brother's  heart  that  it  is  too  little.  For  in  my 
land  the  hand  of  Nergal  (the  god  of  pestilence)  has 
slain  all  the  workers,  and  copper  cannot  be  produced. 
And,  my  brother,  take  it  not  to  heart  that  thy  mes- 
senger stayed  three  years  in  my  land.  For  the  hand 
of  Nergal  is  in  it,  and  in  my  house  my  young  wife 
died." 

Yet  this  ruler  also  had  to  guard  himself  against 
embassies  unworthy  of  a  king  sent  by  Napkhuria. 
Another  prince,  in  a  letter  unfortunately  much 
damaged,  made  the  complaint  that  Napkhuria  had 
once  caused  his  own  name  to  be  written  first  in  a 
letter.  This  was,  indeed,  unparalleled;  the  title 
of  the  recipient  stands  first  even  in  a  severe  repri- 
mand sent  to  the  Egyptian  vassal  Aziru  As  if 


TUSHRATTA  35 

to  equalise  matters,  in  royal  letters  the  greetings 
that  follow  the  address  begin  with  a  mention  of 
the  welfare  of  the  writer.  "  It  is  well  with  me. 
May  it  be  well  with  thee,"  &c.  There  is,  however, 
one  tablet  addressed  to  Napkhuria  that  committed 
the  offence  complained  of,  and  it  was  perhaps  for 
this  reason  that  the  introductory  address  was 
scratched  through  anciently.  It  is  fairly  certain 
that  this  letter,  as  well  as  the  one  complaining  of 
Napkhuria's  breach  of  etiquette,  came  from  the 
Hittite  king.  The  tone  throughout  is  very  decided, 
and  complaints  of  neglect  of  proper  consideration 
are  not  wanting. 

A  short  time  before  his  death  Nimmuria  had 
married  another  daughter  of  Tushratta,  Tadukhipa, 
the  long  inventory  of  whose  dowry  was  found  at 
Tell  el  Amarna.  On  receiving  the  news — for 
which  he  was  already  prepared — of  the  death  of 
his  hoary-headed  son-in-law,  Tushratta  at  once 
sent  Pirizzi  and  Bubri  "  with  lamentations  "  to 
Napkhuria.  He  managed  to  suppress  his  persona 
wishes  up  to  the  third  message,  but  prepared  the 
way  for  them  by  calling  Teye,  the  chief  wife  of 
Nimmuria,  as  a  witness.  "  And  all  the  matters 
that  I  negotiated  with  thy  father,  Teye,  thy  mother, 
knoweth  them;  none  other  besides  knoweth  of 
them."  Immediately  after  this  came  the  request 
that  Napkhuria  should  send  him  the  "golden 
images"  (statuettes)  that  Nimmuria  had  promised 


36       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

him.  And  Napkhuria  wasted  no  words,  but  sent 
by  the  messenger  Hamashi — the  wooden  models ! 
He  seems  to  have  thought  he  was  acting  as  a 
good  son  and  a  shrewd  man  of  business  in  ful- 
filling his  father's  promises  at  so  cheap  a  rate. 

But  Tushratta  was  not  easily  shaken  off.  His 
next  move  was  to  send  Teye  and  her  son  each  a 
letter  at  the  same  time.  He  gave  polite  greetings 
from  his  wife  Yuni  to  the  widow,  whose  influence 
was  evidently  still  strong,  sent  her  presents,  and 
entreated  her  intercession.  This  remarkable 
letter  runs  as  follows : 

"  To  Teye,  Queen  of  Egypt,  Tushratta,  King  of 
Mitani.  May  it  be  well  with  thee,  may  it  be  well  with 
thy  son,  may  it  be  well  with  Tadukhipa,  my  daughter, 
thy  young  companion  in  widowhood.  Thou  knowest 
that  I  was  in  friendship  with  Nimmuria,  thy  husband, 
and  that  Nimmuria  was  in  friendship  with  me.  What 
I  wrote  to  him  and  negotiated  with  him,  and  likewise 
what  Nimmuria  thy  husband  wrote  to  me  and  nego- 
tiated with  me,  thou  and  Gilia  and  Mani  (Tushratta's 
messengers),  ye  know  it.  But  thou  knowest  it  better 
than  all  others.  And  none  other  knows  it.  Now 
thou  hast  said  to  Gilia  :  '  Say  to  thy  lord,  Nimmuria 
my  husband  was  in  friendship  with  thy  father  and 
sent  him  the  military  standards,  which  he  kept.  The 
embassies  between  them  were  never  interrupted.  But 
now,  forget  not  thou  thine  old  friendship  with  thy 
brother  Nimmuria  and  extend  it  to  his  son  Napkhuria. 
Send  joyful  embassies;  let  them  not  be  omitted.' 
Lo,  I  will  not  forget  the  friendship  with  Nimmuria ! 
More,  tenfold  more,  words  of  friendship  will  I  ex- 


TUSHRATTA  37 

change  with  Napkhuria  thy  son  and  keep  up  right 
good  friendship.  But  the  promise  of  Nimmuria,  the 
gift  that  thy  husband  ordered  to  be  brought  to  me, 
thou  hast  not  sent.  I  asked  for  golden  statuettes. 
But  now  Napkhuria  thy  son  has  had  them  made  of 
wood,  though  gold  is  as  dust  in  thy  land.  Why 
does  this  happen  just  now  ?  Should  not  Napkhuria 
deliver  that  to  me  which  his  father  gave  me  ?  And 
he  wishes  to  increase  our  friendship  tenfold  !  Where- 
fore then  dost  thou  not  bring  this  matter  before  thy 
son  Napkhuria  ?  Even  though  thou  do  it  not  he 
ought  nevertheless  to  deliver  unto  me  statuettes  of 
gold  and  in  no  way  to  slight  me.  Thus  friendship 
will  reign  between  us  tenfold.  Let  thy  messengers 
to  Yuni  my  wife  depart  with  Napkhuria' s  ambassador, 
and  Yuni's  messenger  shall  come  to  thee.  Lo,  I  send 
gifts  for  thee ;  boxes  filled  with  good  oil  (perfume)," 
&c.  &c. 

To  Napkhuria  also  Tushratta  insists  on  his 
rights  in  detail.  The  messengers  from  Mitani 
were  said  to  have  been  present  at  the  casting  of 
the  images,  and  even  to  have  started  on  their 
journey  home  when  Nimmuria  died.  It  may  thus 
be  assumed  that  Napkhuria  at  once  ordered  the 
transport  to  be  brought  back.  Queen  Teye  evi- 
dently showed  no  desire  to  be  mixed  up  in  so 
unpleasant  a  business,  but  Napkhuria  demanded 
that  the  messenger  Gilia  should  be  sent  to  him. 

Most  probably  this  often-mentioned  Gilia  was 
the  witness  present  at  the  casting  and  despatching 
of  the  images.  Tushratta  gave  evasive  answers, 


,8       LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  KINGS 

and  his  last  letter  (more  than  two  hundred  lines 
in  length)  is  something  in  the  nature  of  an  ulti- 
matum. On  both  sides  fresh  complaints  are 
brought  forward,  and  the  settlement  of  each  one 
of  them  was  made  dependent  on  the  settlement 
of  the  principal  question.  Napkhuria  threatened 
to  close  his  land  against  all  subjects  of  Mitani, 
and,  as  no  later  document  has  been  found,  it  is 
probable  that  at  this  point  all  intercourse  ceased. 
A  much  mutilated  letter  from  Gebal  to  Egypt 
announces  the  departure  of  the  king  of  Mitani 
with  an  armed  force ;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether 
this  can  be  quoted  in  the  present  connection. 

The  characters  of  the  two  irreconcilable 
monarchs,  who  show  each  other  up  so  admirably 
for  our  edification,  make  any  question  as  to  which 
had  right  on  his  side  seem  comparatively  trifling. 
Tushratta  was  evidently  much  distressed  that  he 
dared  not  venture  to  send  his  Gilia  back  again 
and  that  none  of  the  later  letters  which  he  had 
from  Nimmuria  contained  any  word  of  the  golden 
images.  It  is  evident  also  that  Napkhuria,  sup- 
ported by  Teye,  had  actually  recalled  embassies 
that  his  father  had  already  sent  out.  The  old 
king,  who  had  called  Ishtar  of  Nineveh  to  his 
help,  may  have  been  brought  by  the  approach  of 
death  into  a  generous  state  of  mind  not  uncom- 
mon in  such  cases.  Even  now  we  say,  "  He 
must  be  near  his  end,"  when  a  man  shows  unex- 


LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS     39 

pected  and  unusual  gentleness.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  Nimmuria  had  ordered  the  images 
in  question  to  be  made  for  his  worthy  friend 
without  giving  any  formal  promise  to  send  them, 
and  that  as  soon  as  Tushratta  learned  what  had 
happened,  he  promptly  interposed  with  a  lie,  in 
hope  of  appealing  to  Napkhuria's  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things.  That,  however,  was  expecting 
too  much. 


IV.  LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS. 

Four-fifths  of  the  number  of  letters  consist  of 
reports  and  communications  from  Egyptian  go- 
vernors, military  commanders,  magistrates,  and 
other  officials  in  Western  Asia.  The  form  of 
address  from  these  subordinates  to  the  Pharaoh 
is  naturally  very  different  from  "  Royal  Brother/' 
and  in  hurried  announcements  it  is  often  con- 
tracted. Written  in  full  the  long  formula  runs : 

"  To  he  king,  my  lord,  my  gods,  my  sun,  the  sun 
of  heaven ;  Yitia,  prefect  of  Askelon  is  thy  servant, 
the  dust  at  thy  feet,  the  servant  of  thy  horses.  At 
the  feet  of  the  king  my  lord  seven  times  and  again 
seven  times  I  prostrate  myself  upon  my  back  and 
upon  my  breast." 

The  importance  of  these  letters,  however,  con- 
sists in  the  substance  of  what  they  report  and  in 


40     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

what  they  tell  us  as  to  the  doings  of  the  writers. 
They  are  the  data  by  reason  of  which  the  Tell  el 
Amarna  archives  constitute  a  unique  store  of 
historical  material  for  the  study  of  the  history  of 
civilisation. 

Warlike  expeditions  among  the  vassal  chiefs 
were  the  order  of  the  day.  Most  dangerous  of 
all  the  chiefs  was  Aziru,  prefect  of  the  land  of  the 
Amorites,  whose  territory  included  the  district 
north  of  Damascus  and  part  of  the  valley  of  the 
Orontes.  In  the  hope  of  founding  an  independent 
kingdom,  Aziru  had  swiftly  seized  on  the  domi- 
nions of  all  the  chiefs  on  his  northern  boundary, 
and  in  this  action  his  admirable  understanding 
with  the  Egyptian  officials  afforded  him  invaluable 
help.  The  town  of  Tunip  sent  a  truly  pathetic 
letter  to  Pharaoh  from  which  we  learn  that  Aziru 
had  already  taken  Nii,  was  besieging  Simyra  in 
Phoenicia,  and  at  the  same  time,  by  the  aid  of  his 
creatures  at  Court,  had  succeeded  in  preventing 
the  king  from  reinstating  a  prince  of  Tunip  who 
had  been  sent  into  Egypt  as  a  hostage.  This 
prince,  a  certain  Yadi  Addu,  had  already  been 
released  and  was  on  his  way  home  when  the  allies 
of  Aziru  caused  him  to  be  recalled. 

"  If,  however,  we  have  to  mourn,"  so  the  complaint 
proceeds,  "  the  king  himself  will  soon  have  to  mourn 
over  those  things  which  Aziru  has  committed  against 
us,  for  next  he  will  turn  his  hand  against  his  lord. 


RIB-ADDI  41 

But  Tunip,  thy  city,  weeps ;  her  tears  flow ;  nowhere 
is  there  help  for  us." 

The  most  bitter  complaints  against  Aziru  and 
his  father  Abd-Ashera  come  from  Rib-Addi  of 
Gebal.  His  utterances  rival  the  Lamentations  of 
Jeremiah  both  in  volume  and  in  monotonous 
pathos.  One  of  these  many  letters,  the  contents 
of  which  are  often  stereotyped  enough,  is  also 
noticeable  for  its  revelation  of  the  connection  of 
Rib-Addi,  who  must  already  have  been  an  elderly 
man,  with  Amanappa : 

"  To  Amanappa,  my  father ;  Rib-Addi,  thy  son ! 
At  my  father's  feet  I  fall.  Again  and  again  I  asked 
thee,  'Canst  thou  not  rescue  me  from  the  hand  of 
Abd-Ashera?  All  the  Habiri  are  on  his  side;  the 
princes  will  hear  no  remonstrances,  but  are  in  alliance 
with  him ;  thereby  is  he  become  mighty.'  But  thou 
hast  answered  me,  «  Send  thy  messenger  with  me  to 
Court,  and  then  will  I,  if  nothing  be  said  against  it 
(i.e.,  by  the  king),  send  him  again  and  again  with 
royal  troops  to  thee  till  the  Pidati  march  forth  to 
secure  thy  life,'  Then  I  answered  thee,  '  I  will  not 
delay  to  send  the  man,  but  nothing  of  this  must  come 
to  the  ears  of  Abd-Ashera,  for  [Yanhamu  has]  taken 
[silver]  from  his  hand.'  (As  much  as  to  say  that  if 
Abd-Ashera  gives  Yanhamu  a  hint,  the  messenger 
will  never  get  beyond  Lower  Egypt.)  But  thou  hast 
said,  'Fear  not,  but  send  a  ship  to  the  Yarimuta, 
and  money  and  garments  will  come  to  thee  thence. 
Now,  behold,  the  troops  which  thou  hast  given  me 
have  fled,  because  thou  hast  neglected  me,  while  I 
have  obeyed  thee.  He  hath  spoken  with  the  official 


42     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

(Yanhamu  ?)  nine  times  [in  vain].  Behold,  thou  art 
delaying  with  regard  to  this  offence  as  with  the  others. 
What  then  can  save  me  ?  If  I  receive  no  troops  I 
shall  forsake  my  city,  and  flee,  doing  that  which  seems 
good  to  me  to  preserve  my  life." 

Yanhamu's  bias  against  Rib-Addi  is  made 
evident  in  many  other  letters  which  the  poor 
wretch  addressed  to  the  Court : 

"  If  I  should  make  a  treaty  with  Abd-Ashera  as 
did  Yap-Addi  and  Zimrida,  then  I  should  be  safe. 
Furthermore,  since  Simyra  is  indeed  lost  to  me,  and 
Yanhamu  hath  received  Bit-Arti,  he  ought  to  send 
me  provision  of  grain  that  I  may  defend  the  king's 
city  for  him.  Thou,  oh  king,  speak  to  Yanhamu ; 
'Behold,  Rib-Addi  is  in  thy  hand,  and  all  injury  done 
to  him  falls  on  thee.' " 

This  desire  was  not  complied  with,  for  the 
Phoenician  vassal  was  at  length  robbed  of  all 
his  cities  and  possessions,  so  that  even  the  callous 
Egyptian  Government  felt  obliged  at  last  to  send 
a  threatening  embassy  to  Aziru,  the  son  of  Abd- 
Ashera,  and  the  real  author  of  the  difficulties  in 
Gebal.  At  the  same  time  the  surrender  was 
demanded  of  certain  "  enemies  of  the  king,"  who 
were  in  all  probability  principal  adherents  of 
Aziru.  When  the  messenger  Hani  arrived  with 
this  note,  Aziru,  evidently  warned  in  good  time, 
had  promptly  vanished  over  the  hills,  and  none  of 
the  royal  commands  could  be  carried  out.  He 


AZIRU  43 

pretends  to  have  settled  down  in  Tunip,  which  he 
must  previously  have  seized,  but  at  once  returned 
home  on  hearing  of  Hani's  arrival.  Unfortunately 
it  was  too  late.  The  cunning  Amorite  brought 
forward  one  excuse  after  another.  "  Even  if  thy 
actions  be  just,  yet  if  thou  dissemble  in  thy  letters 
at  thy  pleasure,  the  king  must  at  length  come  to 
think  that  thou  liest  in  every  case,"  is  a  passage 
in  the  letter  brought  by  Hani.  Aziru  replies  in  a 
tone  of  injured  innocence : 

"  To  the  great  king,  my  lord,  my  god,  my  sun ; 
Aziru,  thy  servant.  Seven  times  and  again  seven 
times,  &c.  Oh,  lord,  I  am  indeed  thy  servant ;  and 
only  when  prostrate  on  the  ground  before  the  king, 
my  lord,  can  I  speak  what  I  have  to  say.  But 
hearken  not,  O  lord,  to  the  foes  who  slander  me 
before  thee.  I  remain  thy  servant  for  ever." 

This  trusty  vassal  added  to  his  other  known 
faults  the  peculiarity  of  conspiring  readily  with 
the  Hittite  foes  of  the  Court.  His  insolence 
helped  him  successfully  out  of  these  awkward 
difficulties  also  whenever  the  matter  came  under 
discussion.  When  preparing  fresh  raids  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  invent  news  of  Hittite  invasions 
which  he  was  bound  to  resist,  and  all  territory 
which  he  then  took  from  his  co-vassals  would, 
according  to  his  own  account,  otherwise  certainly 
have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  But 
as  the  result  was  always  the  same — i.e.,  to  the 


44     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

advantage  of  Aziru  alone — the  opinion  began  to 
prevail  in  Egyptian  councils  that  this  restless 
vassal  should  be  summoned  to  Court  and  tried. 
For  many  years  Aziru  succeeded  in  evading  these 
fatal  and  dangerous,  or  at  best  very  costly  orders. 
But  finally  he  was  forced  to  obey,  and  with  heavy 
heart  and  well-filled  treasure  chests  set  off  for 
Egypt.  Apparently  he  relied  on  his  principal 
ally  Dudu,  whom  in  his  letters  he  always  ad- 
dresses as  " father";  but  this  pleasant  alliance 
did  not  avail  to  protect  the  disturber  of  the 
peace  from  provisional  arrest.  The  last  letter 
in  the  Aziru  series,  which  had  obviously  been 
confiscated  and  subsequently  found  its  way  back 
into  the  archives,  is  a  letter  of  condolence  from 
the  adherents  or  sons  of  Aziru  to  their  imprisoned 
chief.  Nevertheless,  the  political  activity  of  the 
Amorite  chief  seemed  to  many  Syrian,  and 
especially  to  Phoenician  princes  as  on  the  whole 
for  the  good  of  the  land,  and,  therefore,  to  be 
supported.  His  appearance  put  the  longed-for 
end  to  a  far  less  endurable  condition  of  things. 
Two  communications  from  Akizzi,  the  headman  of 
the  city  of  Katna,  near  Damascus,  exhibit  the 
difference  clearly.  When  Akizzi  sent  his  first 
communication  to  Nimmuria  every  petty  chief 
went  raiding  on  his  own  account :  Teuwatta  of 
Lapana,  Dasha,  Arzawia  and  all  the  rest  of  them. 
These  vanished  with  the  entrance  of  Aziru  upon 


THE  HEBREWS  45 

the  scene,  though  the  change  was  by  no  means 
welcome  to  Akizzi.  In  the  Lebanon  things  were 
no  better.  Here  Namyauza  was  struggling  with 
the  headmen  of  Puzruna  and  Khalunni.  "They 
began  hostilities  together  with  Biridashwi  against 
me  and  said  :  '  Come,  let  us  kill  Namyauza.'  But 
I  escaped."  This  promiscuous  warfare  raged 
most  fiercely  in  the  south.  Here  a  certain  Labaya 
tried  to  play  the  part  taken  by  Aziru  in  the  north. 
But  fortune  was  less  favourable  to  Labaya.  Prob- 
ably he  failed  to  induce  his  undisciplined  officers 
to  act  in  unison,  and  the  unhappy  man's  sole 
achievement  seems  to  have  been  the  welding  of 
his  foes  into  a  compact  body  against  himself.  He 
lost  his  territory,  kept  up  the  struggle  a  little 
longer  as  a  freebooter,  was  taken  captive  at 
Megiddo,  escaped  again  on  the  eve  of  being 
shipped  to  Egypt,  and  fell  in  battle  or  died  a 
natural  death  after  at  length  meeting  apparently 
with  some  success  in  Judaea. 

Jerusalem  was  under  a  royal  "  Uweu,"  a  term 
perhaps  best  rendered  "captain,"  named  Abdi- 
kheba.  A  neighbouring  prefect,  Shuwardata, 
asserted  occasionally  that  he  had  entered  into 
conspiracies  with  Labaya,  and  Abdikheba  in  fact 
complained  of  hostilities  on  all  sides.  Milki-El 
and  his  father-in-law  Tagi,  chiefs  in  the  Philistian 
plain  near  Gath,  were  his  principal  opponents. 
They  recruited  troops  from  among-  the  Habiri  in 


46      LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

the  hope  that  Abdikheba,  finding  himself  practi- 
cally blockaded,  would  weary  of  the  struggle  and 
abandon  the  field.  He  was  evidently  very  nearly 
driven  to  this  when  he  wrote : 

"  Infamous  things  have  been  wrought  against  me. 
To  see  it  would  draw  tears  from  the  eyes  of  the  king, 
so  do  my  foes  press  me.  Shall  the  royal  cities  fall  a 
prey  to  the  Habiri  ?  If  the  Pidati  do  not  come  in 
the  course  of  this  year,  let  the  king  send  messengers 
to  fetch  me  and  all  my  brethren  that  we  may  die  in 
the  presence  of  the  king,  our  lord." 

By  the  Habiri  we  must  here  understand  no 
other  than  the  Hebrews,  who  were  therefore 
already  to  be  found  in  the  "  Promised  Land,"  but 
had  not  yet  firmly  established  themselves  there. 
They  swarmed  in  the  Lebanon,  where  Namyauza 
had  formally  enlisted  one  of  their  hordes ;  and 
yet  it  seems  as  if  they  already  held  Shechem  and 
Mount  Ephraim  as  free  tribal  property.  At  any 
rate,  no  letter  thence  to  the  king  has  been  dis- 
covered, although  there  is  one  mention  of  the 
city  Shakmi  (Shechem).  The  genuinely  ancient 
passages  in  the  scriptural  accounts  of  the  con- 
quest in  the  Book  of  Joshua,  and  still  more  the 
valuable  fragments  in  the  first  chapter  of  Judges, 
are  fairly  in  accordance  with  what  we  here  learn 
from  the  tablets. 

Abdikheba's  letters  may  be  considered  along 
with  those  of  Milki-El  and  Tagi,  of  whom  Yan- 


COMPLAINTS  OF  NEGLECT  47 

hamu,  the  powerful  official,  had  just  made  an 
example.  Their  voices  take  up  the  chorus  of 
complaint : 

ABDIKHEBA.  "  Lo  !  Milki-El  and  Tagi  have  done 
as  follows.  .  .  .  Thus,  as  the  king  liveth,  hath  Milki- 
El  committed  treachery  against  me.  Send  Yanhamu 
that  he  may  see  what  is  done  in  the  king's  land." 

MILKI-EL.  "  The  king,  my  lord,  shall  know  the 
deed  done  by  Yanhamu  after  I  had  been  dismissed 
by  the  king.  Lo,  he  took  three  thousand  talents  from 
me  and  said  to  me,  *  Give  me  thy  wife  and  thy  sons 
that  I  may  slay  them.'  May  my  lord,  the  king, 
remember  this  deed  and  send  us  chariots  to  bring  us 
away." 

TAGI.  "  Am  I  not  a  servant  of  the  king  ?  But 
my  brother  is  full  of  wounds  so  that  I  can  send  no 
message  by  him  to  the  king.  Ask  the  rabisu  (a 
title  of  Yanhamu)  whether  my  brother  is  not  full  of 
wounds.  But  we  turn  our  eyes  to  thee,  to  know 
whether  we  may  rise  to  heaven  or  creep  into  the 
earth;  our  heads  remain  in  thy  hand.  Behold,  I 
shall  try  to  make  my  way  to  the  king  by  the  hand  of 
the  surgeons." 

MILKI-EL.  "I  have  received  the  king's  message. 
Let  him  send  the  Pidati  to  protect  his  servant,  and 
grains  of  myrrh  gum  for  healing." 

As  already  pointed  out,  the  blame  for  such 
occurrences  belongs  in  the  first  place  to  the 
Egyptian  system  of  government.  How  little  the 
petty  princes  could  expect,  whether  of  good  or 
evil,  from  their  suzerain  is  shown  by  glaring 
examples.  King  Burnaburiash  complained  that 


48     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

a  Babylonian  trading  company  established  by  his 
ambassador  in  the  Canaanite  city  of  Khinaton 
had,  immediately  after  the  ambassador's  depar- 
ture, been  attacked  and  utterly  plundered.  The 
principals  were  killed,  and  the  rest — some  of  them 
mutilated — were  sent  into  slavery.  "  Canaan  is 
thy  land ;  thou  art  king  of  it,"  continues  Burna- 
buriash.  "  It  was  in  thy  land  that  I  suffered  this 
injury;  therefore  restrain  the  doers  of  it.  Re- 
place the  stolen  gold,  and  slay  the  murderers  of 
my  subjects  to  avenge  their  blood."  Whether 
this  was  done  was  extremely  doubtful,  for  part  of 
the  plunder  had  in  all  probability  already  sufficed 
to  secure  a  safe  retreat  for  the  brigands,  who, 
furthermore,  were  officials  from  some  of  whom 
letters  have  been  found.  The  natural  consequence 
was  that  the  ambassadors  themselves  were  at- 
tacked. Their  caravan  with  gifts  for  Napkhuria 
was  robbed  twice  in  succession,  and  they  them- 
selves were  held  to  ransom.  The  Egyptian 
Government  nevertheless  remained  outrageously 
slack  as  ever,  as  we  may  see  from  the  following 
safe  conduct  granted  on  behalf  of  the  Canaanite 
miscreants:  "To  the  princes  in  the  land  of 
Canaan,  the  vassals  of  my  brother.  Akiya,  my 
messenger,  I  send  to  the  King  of  Egypt  my 
brother.  Bring  him  safe  and  quickly  to  Egypt. 
Let  no  violence  befall  him." 

Prefects  of  Canaanite  ports  were  naturally  in 


ABI-MILKI  49 

most  active  communication  with  Egypt.  On  some 
of  the  shrewder  minds  among  these  men  it  had 
dawned  that  it  pleased  and  amused  the  king  to 
have  immediate  news  of  messages  by  sea  and 
land  from  far  and  near  communicated  in  their 
letters.  Abi-milki  of  Tyre  had  carried  this  practice 
farthest,  and  he  was  also  admirably  skilful  in 
lodging  complaints  by  the  way.  We  owe  to  this 
worthy  one  of  the  choicest  pieces  in  the  whole 
collection,  the  elegant  paean  of  a  place-hunter  of 
more  than  three  thousand  years  ago.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  some  of  his  rhetorical  expressions 
repeatedly  recall  those  of  the  Hebrew  Psalter  in 
the  same  way  as  do  phrases  in  the  letter  of  Tagi 
already  quoted.  In  fact,  the  Bible  critic  has  much 
to  learn  from  the  tablets  as  a  whole.  After 
the  formal  beginning,  Abi-milki  launches  out  as 
follows : 

"  My  lord  the  king  is  the  Sun-God,  rising  each 
day  over  the  earth  according  to  the  will  of  his 
gracious  father,  the  heavenly  Sun-God  (Aten).  His 
words  give  life  and  prosperity.  To  all  lands  his 
might  giveth  peace.  Like  the  (Phoenician)  god  Ram- 
man,  so  he  thunders  down  from  heaven,  and  the 
earth  trembles  before  him.  Behold,  thy  servant 
writeth  as  soon  as  he  has  good  news  to  send  the 
king.  And  the  fear  of  my  lord,  the  king,  fell  upon 
the  whole  land  till  the  messenger  made  known  the 
good  news  from  the  king  my  lord.  When  I  heard 
through  him  the  command  of  the  king  to  me,  '  Be  at 
the  disposal  of  my  high  officials,'  then  thy  servant 

D 


50     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

answered  his  lord,  '  It  is  already  done.'  On  my 
breast  and  on  my  back  write  I  down  for  myself  the 
commands  of  the  king.  Verily,  he  who  hearkeneth 
to  the  king  his  lord,  and  serveth  him  with  love,  the 
Sun-God  riseth  over  him,  and  a  good  word  trom  the 
mouth  of  his  lord  giveth  him  life.  If  he  heed  not 
the  commands  of  his  lord  his  city  will  fall,  his  house 
will  perish,  and  his  name  will  be  known  no  more  for 
ever  in  all  lands.  But  he  who  followeth  his  lord  as  a 
faithful  servant,  his  city  is  prosperous,  his  house  is 
secure,  and  his  name  shall  endure  for  ever." 

The  letter  continues  for  some  time  in  the  same 
strain,  but  at  the  end  the  courtier  bethinks  him  of 
his  office  of  informer,  and  adds  hastily : 

"  Furthermore,  Zimrida,  the  prefect  of  Sidon,  sends 
a  report  every  day  to  Aziru,  Abd-Ashera's  son.  Every 
word  that  comes  from  Egypt  he  telleth  to  him.  I, 
however,  tell  it  to  my  lord,  that  it  may  serve  thee,  oh 
my  lord ! " 

Two  princes,  Adad-nirari  of  Nukhashi  and 
another  whose  name  is  now  illegible,  apparently 
take  a  higher  rank  than  their  neighbours.  Nukhashi 
is  often  named  in  these  tablets  as  well  as  in  Egyp- 
tian inscriptions,  and  it  must  have  been  situated  on 
the  north-east  slope  of  the  Lebanon  range.  We 
have  also  letters  from  the  towns  of  Biruta  (Bey- 
rout),  Hashab,  Hazi,  Kumidi,  Kadesh  on  the 
Orontes,  Sidon,  Akko,  Ruhiza,  Megiddo,  Hazor, 
Gezer,  Gaza,  Lachish,  Shamhuna,  Mushihuma, 
Dubu,  and  others,  while  there  are  many -more  so 


GEOGRAPHICAL  DATA  51 

mutilated  that  their  origin  can  no  longer  be  deter- 
mined. 

These  letters,  though  by  no  means  all  cf  them 
containing  important  contributions  to  the  history 
of  political  intrigue,  are  often  of  interest  from  the 
light  they  throw  on  manners  and  customs.  A 
few  further  extracts  are  therefore  given  here. 

"  To  the  king  my  lord,  my  gods,  my  sun ;  Yabitiri 
is  thy  servant,  the  dust  of  thy  feet,  &c.  And  a 
faithful  servant  of  the  king  am  I.  I  look  hither,  and 
I  look  thither,  but  it  is  not  light ;  then  I  look  to  the 
king  my  lord,  then  there  is  light.  A  brick  may  be 
removed  from  its  firm  bed,  but  I  move  not  away  from 
the  king's  feet.  Let  my  lord  the  king  ask  Yanhamu, 
his  rabisit.  While  I  was  still  young  he  brought  me 
to  Egypt,  and  I  served  my  lord  the  king  and  stood 
at  the  gate  of  the  palace  (as  page).  And  to-day,  let 
my  lord  the  king  ask  his  rabisu,  I  guard  the  gates 
of  Gaza  and  of  Joppa.  I  am  also  attached  to  the 
Pidati  of  my  lord  the  king ;  whither  they  go  thither 
do  I  go  with  them,  as  even  now.  On  my  neck  rests 
the  yoke  of  my  lord  the  king,  and  I  bear  it." 

The  following  tablet  from  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  Jordan  promises  good  results  as  the  reward  of 
future  research  for  geographical  details  : 

"  To  Yanhamu,  my  lord  :  Mut-Addi  is  thy  servant 
at  thy  feet.  I  told  thee  before,  and  it  is  so  indeed ; 
Ayab  hath  fled  in  secret,  as  did  also  previously  the 
king  of  Bihishi  before  the  commissioners  of  the  king 
his  lord.  Is  Ayab  now  in  Bihishi  ?  [He  is  there] 
truly  as  the  lord  king  liveth,  truly  as  he  liveth.  For 


52     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

two  months  he  has  been  there.  Behold,  Benenima  is 
present,  Tadua  is  present,  Yashua  is  present ;  ask 
them  whether  he  hath  fled  from  Shadi-Marduk,  from 
Astarti.  When  all  the  cities  in  the  land  of  Gari 
were  in  rebellion,  Adma  (Udumu),  Aduri,  Araru, 
Mishtu,  Migdal,  Ain-anab  and  Sarki  were  taken,  then 
later  Hawani  and  Yabesh.  Behold,  moreover,  as 
soon  as  thou  hadst  written  a  letter  to  me  I  wrote  to 
him  (Ayab)  that  thou  hadst  returned  from  thy  journey 
(to  Palestine  ?)  And  behold  he  came  to  Bihishi  and 
heard  the  command." 

The  names  Ayab  and  Yashua  recall  Job  and 
Joshua  to  our  minds. 

The  great  alacrity  shown  in  this  letter  was,  as 
we  already  know,  most  acceptable  to  Yanhamu. 
Another  Syrian  chief,  whose  name  has  been  obli- 
terated, complained  bitterly  that  Yanhamu  had 
refused  him  a  passage  through  his  territories, 
although  he  showed  the  royal  summons  to  Court. 
This,  indeed,  may  have  been  an  indirect  favour  to 
his  correspondent.  Very  amusing  is  a  group  of 
three  synoptic  letters,  written  by  one  scribe  for 
Biri  ....  (the  name  is  imperfect)  of  Hashab, 
Ildaya  ....  of  Hazi,  and  another.  These 
vassals  had  evidently  taken  the  field  together. 
They  recite  their  tale  like  a  chorus  of  schoolboys 
repeating  a  lesson. 

"  Behold,  we  were  besieging  the  cities  of  the  king 
my  lord  in  the  land  of  Amki  (i.e.,  cities  that  had 
fallen  away  and  had  ceased  to  pay  tribute).  Then 


ITAKAMA  53 

came  Itakama,  the  Prince  of  Kinza  (Kadesh),  at  the 
head  of  Hittites.  Let  my  lord  the  king  write  to 
Itakama,  and  cause  him  to  turn  aside  and  give  us 
troops  that  we  may  win  the  cities  of  my  lord  the 
king,  and  thenceforth  dwell  in  them." 

Itakama  was  specially  unpopular  with  his  neigh- 
bours. Apparently  he  was  one  of  the  more 
powerful  allies  of  Aziru,  and  as  such  his  special 
task  was  to  press  as  hard  as  possible  on  the  foes 
of  the  Amorites  in  southern  Ccele-Syria.  Perhaps, 
however,  Aziru  and  Itakama  did  not  come  together 
till  each  for  a  time  had  fought  his  battles  alone. 
The  Hittites  in  Itakama's  force  were,  of  course, 
prominently  mentioned  to  alarm  Pharaoh.  They 
may  have  been  Hittite  spearmen  enrolled  by  the 
prince  of  Kadesh,  much  as  the  Habiri  and  Sutu 
had  been  enlisted  by  his  chief  rival  Namyauza. 
It  is  even  possible  that  the  soldiers  of  Kadesh  had 
always  been  armed  in  Hittite  fashion ;  perhaps 
the  town  was  already  inhabited  by  people  of 
Hittite  stock.  Later  the  Hittites  actually  seized 
Kadesh,  and  it  is  questionable  whether  it  was  for 
the  first  time.  Itakama  himself,  however,  scouts 
any  thought  of  defection  ;  nay,  he  writes  : 

"  To  the  king  my  lord,  &c.  I  am  thy  servant, 
but  Namyauza  hath  slandered  me  to  thee,  oh  my 
master.  And  while  he  was  doing  that  he  occupied 
all  the  inheritance  of  my  fathers  in  the  land  of 
Kadesh,  and  my  villages  hath  he  set  on  fire.  Do  not 


54     LETTERS  FROM  ASIATIC  VASSALS 

the  officers  of  my  lord  the  king  and  his  subjects 
know  my  faithfulness  ?  I  serve  thee  with  all  my 
brethren,  and  where  there  is  rebellion  against  my 
lord  the  king,  thither  I  march  with  my  warriors,  my 
chariots,  and  all  my  brethren.  Behold,  now  Nam- 
yauza  hath  delivered  up  to  the  Habiri  all  the  king's 
cities  in  the  land  of  Kadesh  and  in  Ube.  But  I 
will  march  forth,  and  if  thy  gods  and  thy  sun  go 
before  me  I  will  restore  these  places  from  the  Habiri 
to  the  king  that  I  may  show  myself  subject  to  him. 
I  will  drive  out  these  Habiri,  and  my  lord  the  king 
shall  rejoice  in  his  servant  Itakama.  I  will  serve  the 
king  my  lord,  and  all  my  brethren,  and  all  lands  shall 
serve  him.  But  Namyauza  will  I  destroy,  for  I  am 
for  ever  a  servant  of  the  king  my  lord." 

The  land  of  Ube  here  named  corresponds  to  the 
Hobah  of  the  Bible,  mentioned  in  Genesis  xiv.  15, 
as  the  place  to  which  Abram  pursued  the  con- 
querors of  Sodom,  who  had  carried  Lot  away. 
According  to  the  margin  of  the  Revised  Version, 
Hobah  lay  "  north  of  Damascus."  In  a  letter 
from  Akizzi  of  Katna  (see  p.  44),  we  read,  how- 
ever, "  Oh,  my  lord  the  king,  as  Damascus  in  the 
land  of  Ube  stretches  out  her  hand  to  thy  feet,  so 
Katna  stretches  out  her  hand  to  thy  feet."  The 
statements  may  be  reconciled  by  the  hypothesis 
that  in  the  Old  Testament  the  position  of  the  town 
after  which  the  district  is  named  is  more  exactly 
indicated.  Other  lands  named  in  the  tablets  are 
more  difficult  to  identify.  To  mitigate  a  famine  in 
Gebal,  Rib-Addi  intended  to  send  for  grain  from 


UGARIT  55 

Zalukhi  in  Ugarit,  but  his  enemies  detained  his 
ships  and  frustrated  his  intentions.  Zalukhi  does 
not  seem  to  be  mentioned  again,  and  Rib-Addi  in 
a  later  letter  compares  Ugarit  with  the  region 
round  Tyre  as  regards  its  administrative  relation 
to  Egypt.  Abi-milki,  the  Tyrian  prefect,  once 
informs  the  king,  "  Fire  hath  devoured  the  city  of 
Ugarit ;  one  half  of  it  hath  it  destroyed  and  not 
the  other."  Finally,  a  certain  Yapakhi-Addi,  after 
an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  get  provisions  into 
Rib-Addi's  city  Simyra,  reproachfully  informs 
Yanhamu  that  Aziru  has  extended  his  dominions 
from  Gebal  to  Ugarit.  Ugarit  must  thus  have 
been  the  most  northerly  of  the  Egyptian  posses- 
sions in  Asia,  and  therefore  not  far  from  the  site 
of  the  modern  Alexandretta.  This  outlying  posi- 
tion made  the  little  state  a  somewhat  insecure 
jewel  in  the  crown  of  Egypt.  King  Kadashman- 
Bel  seems  to  have  been  of  this  opinion  when  (see 
p.  27)  he  included  in  his  little  list  of  ladies  impos- 
sible for  a  royal  harem  "  a  maiden  from  Ugarit." 
Evidently  he  meant  to  enumerate  superciliously 
petty  foreign  "princesses  "  only. 

Of  a  certain  land  of  Danuna  (considered  a  part 
of  Canaan)  we  learn  further  that  its  king  died, 
and  that  his  brother  succeeded  to  the  throne 
unopposed.  One  of  the  two  may  be  identical 
with  the  king  of  Tana;  who,  as  Rib-Addi 
briefly  mentions,  was  about  to  march  to  Gebal, 


56  POLITICAL  CONDITIONS 

but  was   forced   by  scarcity  of  water  to  return 
home. 

A  few  letters  from  women  are  among  the 
tablets.  Two  probably  came  from  the  wife  of 
Milki-El,  who  was  hard  pressed  by  the  Habiri 
when  her  husband  was  called  to  Egypt.  Two 
others  are  addressed,  "  The  handmaid  to  my 
mistress "  ;  perhaps  they  were  sent  along  with 
Tushratta's  letters  to  his  daughter  in  Egypt  and 
were  from  one  of  her  playfellows  or  relatives. 
Finally,  the  daughter  of  Napkhuria,  married  to 
Burnaburiash,  sent  a  small  tablet  to  her  father 
by  a  special  envoy  named  Kidin-Ramman. 
"  Before  the  face  of  my  lord  let  him  come " 
indicates  that  the  letter  was  "to  be  delivered 
in  person."  It  is  a  pity  that  this  dainty  little 
letter  is  for  the  most  part  illegible. 


V.  POLITICAL  CONDITIONS  IN  THE  TELL  EL 
AMARNA  PERIOD. 

However  favourably  the  religious  reform  of 
King  Napkhuria  may  be  estimated  on  its  own 
merits,  it  by  no  means  strengthened  the  authority 
of  Egypt  in  Asia.  Of  course  it  could  have  in  no 
way  been  the  cause  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  Syria 
and  Canaan;  perhaps  Amenophis  III.,  whatever 
his  own  great  slackness,  simply  inherited  the 


SYRIA  AND  PALESTINE  57 

confusion  in  this  part  of  his  empire.  The  heaviest 
blows  could  not  in  the  long  run  prevent  the 
Habiri  from  returning  to  the  attack  again  and 
again  at  brief  intervals.  Their  need  of  expansion 
was  greater  than  their  fear,  and,  after  all,  it 
mattered  little  to  Pharaoh  whether  the  Habirite 
or  the  Canaanite  paid  tribute  in  Palestine  as  soon 
as  the  intruder  was  prepared  to  acknowledge  his 
rights.  Napkhuria's  great  weakness  was  his 
obvious  partiality  for  those  of  his  officials  who 
had  become  Aten  worshippers,  and  the  eagerness 
of  these  men  to  exploit  the  royal  favour  was  in 
proportion  to  their  disbelief  in  the  permanence  of 
the  movement  for  reform. 

In  their  Babylonian  form  the  Tell  el  Amarna 
tablets  are  in  the  first  place  the  product  of  the 
diplomatic  custom  of  the  time,  but  in  many  details 
of  their  contents  they  show  that  the  civilisation 
of  Western  Asia  had  for  centuries  been  based 
on  a  Babylonian  foundation.  With  the  lack  of 
exact  information  so  frequently  to  be  deplored 
in  Egyptian  accounts,  the  wordy  narratives  of 
the  campaigns  of  Thutmosis  III.  scarcely  enable 
us  to  determine  exactly  from  which  of  the  greater 
powers  he  had  succeeded  in  wresting  districts  of 
Syria  and  Palestine.  As  regards  the  political 
situation  there,  even  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Kassite  Dynasty — a  change  probably  attended 
by  long  internecine  struggles — Babylonia  seems 


58  POLITICAL  CONDITIONS 

to  have  lost  its  western  possessions  on  the 
Mediterranean,  and  we  may  rather  suppose  that 
it  was  the  kings  of  Mitani  who  ruled  these  terri- 
tories in  the  time  of  Thutmosis  III. 

Mitani,  though  still  an  extensive  power,  had 
seen  its  best  days  at  any  rate  when  Tushratta 
with  difficulty  ascended  the  throne  of  his  fathers. 
The  name  "  Hanirabbat"  by  which  it  was  known 
to  all  its  neighbours,  must  be  the  older  name,  and 
also  that  of  the  original  province  to  which  later 
acquisitions  had  been  united.  It  is  an  established 
fact  that  Eastern  Cappadocia,  the  mountainous 
province  of  Melitene  on  the  Upper  Euphrates,  was 
still  known  as  Hanirabbat  about  690  B.C.,  and 
that,  on  the  other  hand,  Mitani,  in  the  narrower 
sense  of  the  term,  must  have  corresponded  to  the 
later  Macedonian  province  of  Mygdonia,  i.e.,  Meso- 
potamia proper.  We  have  seen,  however,  that 
Ninua,  afterwards  the  Assyrian  capital  Nineveh, 
was  part  of  the  dominion  of  Tushratta,  otherwise 
he  could  hardly  have  sent  Ishtar,  the  goddess  of 
that  city,  to  Egypt.  The  subsequent  capital  of 
Assyria  may  have  been  the  most  easterly  pos- 
session of  the  kingdom  of  Hanirabbat-Mitani, 
the  centre  of  gravity  of  which  lay  farther  west- 
ward. In  the  letters  there  is  a  remark  of  the  king 
of  Alashia  recommending  Pharaoh  to  exchange 
no  more  gifts  with  "  the  kings  of  the  Hittites  and 
of  Shankhar."  Mitani  is,  perhaps,  here  named 


MIT  AN  I  59 

Shankhar  from  its  dependencies  in  Asia  Minor, 
or  we  may  suppose  it  to  have  been  the  name  of 
Tushratta's  residence. 

In  contrast  to  the  Hittite  empire,  which  was 
pressing  forward  from  the  neck  of  Asia  Minor 
through  the  passes  of  Issus  into  Syria,  and  was 
rapidly  increasing  in  power,  Mitani  stood  on  the 
eve  of  its  fall.  Babylonians  and  Hittites  were 
alike  watching  to  pluck  the  ripe  fruit,  and  perhaps 
it  lacked  Little  to  decide  Tushratta,  instead  of 
fighting  once  more  for  the  crown,  to  capitulate 
to  the  invading  Hittites  and  see  the  end  of  the 
kingdom  of  Mitani.  The  great  "love"  of  this 
king  for  Egypt  was  not,  therefore,  called  forth 
merely  by  the  glitter  of  gold,  but  also  by  dire 
political  necessity.  The  catastrophe  occurred 
some  few  decades  after  the  correspondence  comes 
to  an  end  for  us.  Mitani  vanished  from  the 
states  of  Western  Asia  and  gave  place  to  small 
Aramaic  kingdoms,  while  the  eastern  boundary, 
together  with  Ninua,  was  seized  by  Assyria  as 
the  first  step  to  her  subsequent  suzerainty  in  the 
East. 

But  still  more  swiftly  overtaken  of  fate  was 
the  XVIlIth  Dynasty  in  Egypt.  Napkhuria 
did  not  even  see  the  completion  of  his  city  at 
Tell  el  Amarna,  for  he  died  in  1370  B.C.  His 
reform  followed  him,  and  the  victorious  champions 
of  Amon  could  raze  to  the  ground  the  hated  City 


6o  POLITICAL  CONDITIONS 

of  the  Sun's  Disk.  They  must  already  have  been 
on  the  march  when  in  a  happy  moment  it 
occurred  to  a  keeper  of  the  royal  archives  to 
conceal  the  clay  tablets  in  the  earth  and  thus 
save  them  for  remote  posterity. 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX 


THE  best  translation  of  the  Tell  el  Amarna  tablets  avail- 
able for  English  readers  is  that  from  the  German  of  H. 
Winckler,  published  by  Luzac,  London,  1896. 

Professor  Flinders  Petrie's  Syria  and  Egypt  from  the 
Tell  el  Amarna  Letters  (Methuen,  1898)13  a  synopsis  of 
the  letters  as  far  as  they  belong  to  the  relations  of  Egypt 
and  Syria,  with  the  addition  of  geographical  and  historical 
notes.  In  the  Inti eduction  Professor  Petrie  gives  a 
harrowing  account  of  the  casual  way  in  which  the  tablets 
were  found  and  of  the  criminal  carelessness  with  which 
these  priceless  records  were  subsequently  handled. 

Some  years  afier wards,  in  1891-2,  Professor  Petrie 
himself  excavated  what  was  left  of  the  ruins  of  the  royal 
city  of  Amenhetep  IV.  An  account  of  his  discoveries  on 
that  site  and  of  his  deductions  from  them  may  be  found 
in  his  finely  illustrated  memoir  Tell  el  Amarna  (Methuen, 
1894).  He  particularly  emphasises  the  skill  and  originality 
displayed  in  the  remains  of  the  arts  and  crafts  of  the  Tell 
ei  Armarna  period,  and  emphatically  points  out  the 
evidence  of  active  connection  between  Egypt  and  ^Egean 


62         BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  APPENDIX 

(Mykensean)  civilisation  at  that  time.  His  appreciation 
of  the  character  of  Akhenaten  differs  considerably  from 
that  formed  by  the  author  of  the  present  pamphlet,  and 
should  be  compared  with  it.  In  vol.  ii.  p.  205  et  seqq.  of 
his  History  of  Egypt,  Professor  Petrie  maintains  the  same 
views.  The  same  volume  also  contains  his  earlier 
synopsis  of  the  Tell  el  Amarna  tablets. 


Professor  Maspero's  account  of  the  historical  bearing 
of  these  tablets  is  worked  into  the  second  volume  of  his 
great  Histoire  Ancienne  des  Peuples  de  POrient,  which 
is  entitled  Les  Premieres  Melees  des  Peuples.  A  transla- 
tion of  that  work  has  been  issued  by  the  Society  for  the 
Propagation  of  Christian  Knowledge,  but  in  any  parts 
relating  to  Biblical  history  the  student  will  do  well  to 
consult  the  original. 


The  bearings  of  the  tablets  on  Biblical  history,  and 
particularly  the  evidence  they  have  supplied  as  to  the 
early  date  at  which  the  art  of  writing  was  practised  in 
Syria  and  Palestine,  have  been  favourite  themes  of  Pro- 
fessor Sayce.  His  arguments  and  conclusions  on  these 
points  may  be  found  in  The  Higher  Criticism  and  the 
Verdict  of  the  Monuments  (S.P.C.K.  1894)  ;  Patriarchal 
Palestine  (S.P.C.K.  1895);  The  Egypt  of  the  Hebrews 
and  Herodotus  (Rivingion,  Percival  &  Co.,  1896),  and 
elsewhere. 


Printed  by  BALLANTYNE,  HANSON  &~  60 
London  &*  Edinburgh 


Krug  DS 

42 
The  Tell  el  Amarna  period       .AS